


Haunt (verb)

by Aethelar



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of captivity, Gen, You really think a little thing like being dead is going to stop him protecting his city?, ghost!Graves, off screen character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-07 22:43:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21225446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar
Summary: Haunt: (verb) of a ghost, to manifest itself at a place regularly; (noun) a place frequented by a specified personThere's still work to be done, even after Grindelwald.





	Haunt (verb)

**Author's Note:**

> Halloween is coming, have a ghost.

Things are different, when Graves gets back to work. Grindelwald hangs over him like something dank and gloating, a musty smell and a pervasive chill that never quite goes away. Graves reaches for his coat even under the layers of heating charms in his office, but his hand comes up empty every time. His coat is with Grindelwald. His sharp suits and his scorpion pins are with Grindelwald. Even his scarf.

He tugs down the cuffs of his too-thin shirt and stubbornly ignores the cold.

Bigger things are different as well, things that have broken and can’t be repaired, things that have been exposed as never whole to begin with - but it’s the little things that Graves focuses on. It’s easier to pretend that the world is the same that way. He strides down the same corridors he strode down before, every step of his feet echoing into the same worn patches of carpets as he passes the same wood-panelled offices and the same drooping pot plants.

He stops by the particular pot plant outside his office, and tips a bit of his coffee out for it. He does it because he’s always done it. Because these things matter, in some important, ineffable way.

Grindelwald took his shoes. What kind of bastard takes a man’s shoes? Graves strides down the corridors and it’s all the same, except that he doesn’t have the right shoes on his feet. He can feel the bite of cold iron, ghostly chains cuffed around his ankles and rubbing the skin raw, and he thinks occasionally that that’s what annoys him the most. How cliched is it to be haunted by the sound of clinking chains? What kind of bastard takes a man’s shoes?

They tried to take his pot plant, once. He stares at the empty place it should have stood for a long, fraught moment, the change in routine throwing him off in a way that he’s vaguely aware it shouldn’t have done. Eventually he pours out his coffee on the floor and continues into his office, but it’s not right. It’s not even his pot plant, but still. He’s been feeding the thing coffee for years. Why should he do any different now that he’s - why should he stop now?

Fundamentally though, things are the same. He holds on to this in all the little ways as if he could pretend that nothing’s changed, nothing’s different, he never choked on exhausted dread and never limped, aching, mad, desperate, into that good night his magic never felt like the icy blade of relief he never laid down like a beaten dog and never stared at the damn chains never resented anything like he resented the _fucking chains_ -

He lifts up the papers on his desk and shuffles through them. They’re in the wrong order, so he sorts them. Takes the _top priority_ tag off the murder case and attaches it instead to the fraudulent bonds, because one murderer kills one man at a time but when the nomaj banks go down, whole families will starve when their debts are called. Circles important clues in - in - his pen isn’t where he left it. No matter; he smears a finger over the crucial parts and highlights them in splotchy red.

The papers are collected by a distracted boy who doesn’t make eye contact but does widen his eyes and grip the papers too tight when he sees the notes Graves made. Graves doesn’t recognise him. The boy scurries out of the room with the case files held away from his chest, and Graves would be offended by the lack of regard, if he wasn’t too tired to care. He awards himself a coffee break, tipping the cold remains of his mug out on the floor beside his office where the pot plant used to stand.

They moved the coffee room.

He squints at the files and stacks, the desk in the corner and the engraved name plate on the door.

This is Graves’ coffee room.

For a moment, he slips, because look Graves, look - it isn’t the same, it isn’t how it was, how could things ever be how they were? There are chains around his ankles and he pulls the cuffs of his too-thin shirt down to ward away the cold and he walks the same corridors with their flickering lumos charms and the carpet worn away in the shape of his footsteps and he drags his fingers into the shape of words because he can’t ever find his pens but there’s something red that gleams like ink dripping down his wrists and he builds his coffee room out of the scattered shards of the desk and the files and the scratched and tarnished name plate from the door.

He builds his coffee room and he makes himself a coffee, and when he strides back to his office he swipes away the cleaning charms and pours his coffee out on the growing stain on the floor.

They don’t bring him papers anymore. He writes out the cases on the walls, marks them top priority, the things that will cause his city to fall and the threats his people face.

There aren’t people in the offices he passes anymore. He couldn’t say when it happens, but it happens, and they stop moving the coffee room and they stop rearranging his office and they stop walking down the corridor in huddled pairs shooting fearful glances at the flickering lights. Grindelwald hangs over him like a mouldy shroud, like chains digging into his bones and the burn in his chest as he chokes, and Graves makes coffee and walks his footsteps into the carpet and issues orders that would save lives if anyone was brave enough to listen.

Once, he sees an old woman. She stands in his corridor with a small pot plant in her hands and stares at the warped wood in the corner. It’s only when he pours his coffee out that she speaks.

“They want to rebuild,” she says. “They’ve been wanting to for years, but - well.” She pauses, shifting the plant to one hand so she can tuck a stray curl behind her ear.

“I’ll do what I can,” she says. “They don’t listen to me like they listened to Tina, but I’ll do what I can.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. When she leaves, she leaves the pot plant in the corner. It’s a peace lily. The pot it’s in is blue and white. Graves stares at it for a long time, and when he finally continues into his office his coffee is empty and the plant stands proudly shoulder high in a pot that is old and cracked and decorated with lopsided painted fish.

He digs his fingers into the wall and lists the threats his aurors will face in the next few days, carving out instructions that will keep them alive if only they dared to follow.


End file.
